Welcome to the first day of the New Years Revolution. If you, like me, are feeling a tad jaded today, wondering where Christmas went, and quietly chastising yourself for overindulging in good food, good wine and Kettle Chips...get over it and just think of all the fun you had doing it...life really is too short for regrets, especially about anything as silly as enjoying yourself.
The first feel good instalment is from the fab Suzy Greaves, who I would personally like to thank for all her contributions to Relentlessly Positive and her advice and guidance in 2007. Enjoy her words of wisdom...and I'll be back with more good advice tomorrow...hopefully my hangover will have subsided by then....
Be happy right now!
January is the usual time to set resolutions and goals - hoping that once you achieve them - they will make you happy. There is nothing wrong with goal-setting but what we need to be clear about is what we think these goals will give us. And then ask ourselves is there an easier way to get what we really want?
For example, most people say that they want more money. So the next question is to ask – what do you think that money will really buy you? Often we think we can buy happiness with a posh handbag or a fancy holiday. Of course, these do make us happy in the short-term but as we discover, this feeling soon wears off.
It’s all because of our biology, say the happiness scientists (yes, there is now a whole new field of science to study what makes us happy). Apparently, some primeval instinct in our brain uses negative feelings such as fear to prompt us to take action to ensure survival, driving us to constantly search for possessions and accomplishments to make us bigger, better and faster. But once we get them, we are searching the horizon for something else bigger, better and faster.
The scientists call this the hedonic treadmill.
So maybe we should re-look at the way we set goals by asking the question: how do you really want to feel and what is the quickest, simplest way to feel like that?
Let’s get to it.
Firstly, let’s do some straight 2008 goals. Create a life pie. Draw a circle and then divide it into six slices of pie: career, friends, relationship, health, money, me-time. What would be your top 2008 goal for each of those categories? Try to be specific – how much money do you want to save? How much weight do you want to lose? How many times a week do you want to go out with the people you love?
Now ask – what would that give you? How would that make you feel? Loved, respected, free, attractive, confident, successful? Write down up to six adjectives of how you really want to feel.
Now take that a level deeper. Look at the adjectives in front of you. If you felt all of these things – is there one or two words that could sum that feeling up? Content? In your prime? At peace? Fabulous? I call these your ‘power words’.
Now for the magic bit. What if you didn’t have to achieve any goals to feel like this but you could feel like this right now? Want to try it? Visualise feeling your power words (imagine a time in the past you felt like this, imagine a time in the future where you feel utterly at peace/in your prime/fabulous/content). Where do you feel this in your body? See if you can start spreading it round your body, down then up through the top of your head so it spills out like a fountain. Stay here feeling your power words for 90 seconds.
So for 90 seconds you’re reached your 2008 goal already! Now what you are going to do with the rest of your year?!
My advice is to enjoy the journey. Enjoy every day and see if you can base 2008 around living your power words. Create a daily schedule and new lovely habits that is all about focussing on what you really want – your happiest year yet. Enjoy! Find inner peace in 2008 with The Big Peace 90 day online coaching programme – it’s free!
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Suzy's 30-day Change your Life plan...
Suzy Greaves was voted one of the top ten 'gurus to help you turn your life around' in 2007...